So after watching their Thomas Tuesday video, it's interesting to note that they'll reuse Gordon's wheels to use on Flying Scotsman, just like how Stanley reuses Thomas's wheels. How fitting given that they're brothers, but at the same time, Gordon's chunky looking side rods look a little thick.... if it saves money to make it not too expensive, let's see how it turns out....!

Quote from: TrainFan97 on July 22, 2025, 05:35:39 PMWhether or not his second tender will be optional has yet to be determined. It should just have a standard hook-and-loop coupler so that he can also be run without it.

I think they're more likely going to recycle Spencer's chassis than Gordon's, as the more cost-effective way to get him made quicker. Hopefully by mid-2026, we should see the first unpainted sample of Flying Scotsman.

Despite the inevitably ugly price Flying Scotsman is going to have, he's still going to be a good seller, and should convince Bachmann to make Hiro as the next new tender engine for HO Scale following him. We might get other smaller engines like Whiff and Norman.

Also, I just noticed this thread's title has a typo.

I legit didn't notice the title of this thread having the typo until you mentioned it...! The excitement must've been that hyped that we didn't even notice that.

There's another question that's been on my mind now that the Flying Scotsman is gonna be made for next year: will he have a box packaging like the 009/HOn30 Scale Skarloey Railway characters? For a model like him, and well a unique one with TWO TENDERS, there's no way they'll want to store this model in the blister packaging they're used to using up until this point given how pricey I can imagine him becoming......

I'd also imagine they'd have to measure at least Gordon's overall boiler shape to match since they're similar in shape and size, but with different parts like the dome and running board for example, that's gonna be something I'm curious to see how they'll do for this...

Lastly, excluding the City of Truro, isn't this a 3rd Season Character alongside Oliver, Toad, Mavis, and the upcoming Bulgy to be released altogether in this range?? That's crazy to think about!

Comparing the render shown in the announcements, and then seeing the OG CGI version in this clip, wouldn't it make sense for them to use the render used CGI era? I mean it would make sense that seeing that as Gordon's brother, in terms of his face and boiler should be at least similar in size since they've been going for the CGI renders going from Diesel/Arry and Bert onwards.

I wouldn't be surprised if they used Spencer's wheels for him given that his wheels do look a bit bigger than Gordon's (looking at their Bachmann promo photos, and comparing them to the Flying Scotsman's CGI model, it would make sense if they went to use Spencer's seeing that probably to avoid using Gordon's chunky side rods he's got)...

This more than makes up for the lack of the 80th Anniversary set that got canceled due to the unexpected setbacks from earlier this year. I'm glad this is the surprise that we're genuinely excited for!

Now that I think about it, the easy add-on for James would the the Lamp, considering that both Oliver and Ryan both have these lamps that it would be easy to just now not use those old weird shaped lamps Thomas, Percy, and James have been using for some weird reason....

Boy, Sir Handel looks like if Nitrogen Studios went to the Talyllyn Railway again and redid their design of Sir Haydn just like when they went there to do measurements for the Blue Mountain Mystery special...! It makes me wonder if this is a testing ground for Bachmann to add the detailing not present from the 2012 CGI models of the narrow gauge characters (and to an extent, hopefully this'll mean if Duncan gets green-lit if a solution to find the balance between TV series model and Douglas' model can be made, just like Large Scale Diesel being uncanceled too)... If that's the case, I definitely appreciate the fact they went above and beyond to make Sir Handel as extra special as he is now...!

I'm glad this is the one time his CGI face is used here because while I loved his model series face, his Season 12 face was not so good looking... Like the others back in that season, they were hit-or-misses.....

I only hope that Bachmann can find a medium of making Duncan look like his Tallylyn counterpart. I mean at the very least adding the detail of Douglas would be ideal especially if they plan on making more Tallylyn railway counterparts of say Dolgoch, Midlander, etc.

Also I noticed that the likes of Beau, despite having the added buffers on his CGI model, doesn't have it on his HO scale model, which I welcome because the added buffers just looks weird on an engine like him. I hope that it's the case with Duncan since if they want to make real-life counterpart to sell in the future, they'd have to utilize the proportions of Douglas, at least in terms of the detailing and the boiler size, maybe as a middle ground to match both the CGI and real-life counterpart-the best of both worlds I'd say.